Talk of title win ‘off-limits’ - Niall McGinn

Aberdeen’s man-of-the-match Niall McGinn admitted that top of the Premiership is “a nice place to be” but he’s not getting carried away with a club record run of eight wins in a row and talk of the title is still strictly off-limits.

Aberdeens Niall McGinn applauds the travelling Dons supporters. Picture: SNS

“Being at the top is certainly better than being at the bottom, looking up,” said the striker who scored one goal and made two for David Goodwillie. “If we keep winning these important games that will definitely benefit us in the long run. Games like this with a great atmosphere at Tynecastle are fantastic to be involved in. The spirit at our club is massive. We’ve got a great bunch of lads and the manager is definitely doing his work as well. All together, it’s been a big team effort so far and it’s resulting in good performances and good wins.

“But it’s a long old season so there’s no point in talking about it [the title]. If, come March or April, we’re in a strong position we’ll obviously talk then but right now we’re concentrating on taking one game at a time. We’ll try to win as many as possible and see where that takes us.” McGinn admitted his team had expected a tough game. “There was a bit more hype about this one and we knew it was going to be a difficult match so to go in at half-time three up was great,” he said. “I thought we defended well and counter-attacked well. It was a great team performance from Danny Ward all the way through to David Goodwillie, who I thought was outstanding. Goody has been out of the squad but he’s been patient and I was delighted to see him come in and score two goals.

“This shows the strength in depth that we have. Questions are being asked about us and we keep answering them which is good.”

Hearts defender Blazej Augustyn tried not to be too downbeat about the result. “We made mistakes and they scored their goals,” he said. “Aberdeen are a good team but we are not as bad as the result suggests. We put our hearts into this game and we tried to turn it around but 3-0 is a lot to give up.

“It’s normal when you win games like we did at the start that everyone is happy and looks forward. Everyone wants to win all the games but that’s not possible. Even Barcelona lose games so we can as well.”